While data analyzed by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) indicates Canada’s youth are not looking for overnight kitchen shifts or work in rural and remote communities so cutting the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) doesn’t hand jobs to youth but does create staffing crises.

CFIB Policy Analyst Molly MacCormack says the labour market is showing a mismatch and the government needs to step in to help with the youth unemployment crisis while also ensuring small business have their labour needs met.

“And make sure they have enough workers in their businesses to keep going. We see the TFWP as a complimentary piece to youth employment. If we can’t get that back of the house overnight dishwasher filled all the youth at the front of the business will lose their jobs as well. So, we need both of these things to keep our labour market going and to support our youth and our Canadian businesses.”

MacCormack says the most recent data shows the biggest group of jobs that temporary foreign workers are filling are in the agriculture sector.

“Harvesting laborers, working greenhouses and when we spoke to youth, we were able to survey youth across country we asked them their preferences in terms of where they were willing to relocate and where they would be willing to work. There were very small percentages of youth willing to relocate or work in jobs like that. ”

The CFIB says the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has become a scapegoat for a tighter job market for Canadian youth but challenges young people have are not just job availability it includes things like needing a location closer to home due to lack of transportation available in their community, or for youth still in school, relocation is not realistic and jobs with irregular hours are not practical.